Marketing is essential for any business, and it’s a field that’s constantly researched, analyzed, and developed by professionals. In general, there are lots of marketing activities you can do on your own to save money, such as posting flyers around town or designing business cards. There are others, however, that are best left to the experts, and here are five of them.
Review Tracking Because so many people rely on online reviews to make their purchase decisions, it’s incredibly important that you keep track of what people are saying about your business online. Review tracking can help you stay ahead of the curve in managing your online reputation, but it’s also a time-consuming and tedious process. For the most efficient review tracking, it’s best to outsource the job to a company who has the necessary tools and experience to do it for you.
Mass Mailing Direct, mass mailings are incredibly effective when compared to other forms of offline marketing, and it’s still an approach that many businesses take and profit from. Mass mailing, however, is just that – massive. When mailing out thousands and thousands of flyers – as you need to do to achieve sufficient results – it is a job best left to another company who specializes in it. They have the printers, machinery, and hands needed so that you don’t have to waste time and suffer from papercuts as you address and stuff every envelope by hand.
Review Moderation Another job that’s best left to outsourcing is review moderation. Not only do you need a company to track your online reviews and reputation, but you also need a company who can moderate those reviews. For example, they can be on the lookout for damaging, fraudulent reviews, and they can take the necessary steps on your behalf to remove fraudulent reviews from the web. A company who specializes in review moderation can help you maintain a good online reputation.
Television Commercials Unless you run a video production company, it’s best to leave your television commercials to other professionals. When you run an ad on TV, the quality is highly important. If you run a poorly filmed and poorly edited commercial, it will make your business look of lesser quality. It’s also time-consuming and difficult to create a good commercial if you don’t know what you’re doing – if not impossible. Outsource your TV commercials to a video production company that specializes in creating marketing videos and commercials for businesses like yours
PPC Management A pay-per-click campaign is an excellent way to boost traffic to your website. It’s quick and efficient, but it also requires a lot of monitoring, maintenance, and strategic planning. An online marketing company that can help run your PPC campaign is a good investment to make. They can help you analyze its effectiveness, do tedious keyword research, make sure your ads look and read as well as they should to earn clicks, and make sure you’re getting the best value.
Garrett Payne is an online review management professional with a special interest in review tracking. Garrett suggests those involved in review management; which tasks are best left to the experts.
In marketing it’s not always about strategies or the latest trends, it’s also about creating a more productive, organized and positive work environment. Your business or clients need to see that you’ve got things under control no matter how much life can get chaotic.
We’ve all struggled to keep up with our work loads and I would even hazard to say, sometimes, it seems that life often gets in the way! Yes, I know it should be the other way around, but there are days that just don’t work out that way. The work-life balance is increasingly becoming a trending topic of conversation…both online and at the office. Technology has made accessibility and availability a non-issue. Employers expect employees to be on… whenever and wherever. Reports show that with the increase in technology it’s causing our lives to be more stressful in the work place.
Since I’ve been here with 3H Communications there are many things I’ve learned and one key item is organization. It’s important to maintain control over your work and you achieve this by being organized with emails, time sheets, paper work etc.
Ask yourself, how can I make my job and life easier? What are some key steps I can take to managing my work life to make sure I can be at my best?
Well here are 6 tips I’ve found while scouring the internet that may just help:
1. Make a list. But don’t put it on your computer. Write it out, you will remember things more and the ability to physically cross off an item can boost to your productivity.
2. Minimize clutter. If you haven’t touched it in a month. Get rid of it! Unless it’s for clients or work for later down the road, all the clutter on our desk is causing a distraction which can also cause work anxiety. Alleviate stress by de-cluttering your desk and organizing it.
3. The rule of once. Hilary Clinton says that once a piece of mail is on her desk it gets taken care of once and only once. The same thinking applies to your email box… the new online desk. Leaving emails to build up in your inbox can be a daunting task when sorting through them. Even going through 25 emails can be annoying. Organize your email with folders. Once you’ve read it plop it into the appropriate folder.
4. Perfection isn’t always the best.We all strive to be the best at our jobs, however, when you aim for perfection all the time your stress can become overwhelming. I often apply the 80/20% rule. If a job is completed at 80% of perfection… is the 20% going to make a difference or be noticed. More importantly, how much more time will it take to get the job done. Accept imperfection on the lesser tasks. I order to do that, you must get an understanding of which tasks are the most important and focus on those to be the best. It’s not perfect, but stressing over it won’t help you in the long run.
5. Take a load off. Taking regular breaks can help clear your mind or push past a mental road block. When I have writer’s block I head down to our kitchen and work on a sudoku or crossword puzzle for a few minutes. It can help decrease your stress level, so unless you’re working on a down-to-the-wire project get up stretch and walk around.
6. Say no. In my research to understand the realities of work life as they exist today, the art and ability to say no is among the most important. I have a hard time saying no. I’m very friendly and I always think I have the time to help out a friend or coworker, even when I’m swamped with work. Understanding what your tasks are and how much you can handle is the most important lesson I’ve learnt.
In today’s world, we are connected 24/7 … but we do need a break. Do yourself a favour: Turn off your phone and don’t check your emails. Coming to work stressed or unhappy will have a negative affect on your work and the people around you. If all else fails watch a video with baby animals. Science has proved it decreases procrastination!
Enjoy life, laugh and love. Do you have other ways to help you with your work life? Let me know!
The jury is back and the verdict is in, customers are going mobile. We all kind of intuitively knew that was coming, but the reports are now verifying what we already wondered. If your business is not mobile you are missing a whole lot of customers. What do we mean when we say mobile anyway? By mobile we mean that customers are using mobile devices to track down and find businesses, both local and non local businesses. Let’s look at a scenario; customers will use a phone to perform a search for a local business when they are out and about. They will not bother going home and looking in a phone book or even using a desktop computer to find what they are looking for. They will search with mobile and act fast. Of all the searches done for businesses, 9 out of 10 people reported they reached out and contacted the businesses they found. Thos are great odds for the luck business found. If your business cannot be found on local searches then you will be missing out on a lot of people. Get your business on as many local search results as you can. Every major search engine has a local section. Google Local, Bing Local, etc. There are also rate and review sites to be found on like Yelp, AngiesList, and more. The process is not difficult to do, but it should be done post haste to start capturing the online traffic ever going mobile. This infographic will give you an idea of what can be done in terms of online search.
This guest blog was presented by: www.Vistaprint.com
When we go shopping for anything from food, clothes or cars, we have a lot of choices, at times too many choices. Do we choose a brand that’s familiar to us or do we take a chance with a new one? How do we choose from all these different brands on the retail shelf… and what do they do to set themselves a part from the rest?
With the many choices we have as consumers it’s easy to be overwhelmed – throw in the towel on our decision making process and buy the already known rather than trying something new! But even if we want to try a new product, there are so many out there, we often don’t even know where to begin. Too many of POP materials and communications at the retail level put out by brand makers talk about the feature of their product and totally forget to talk to the benefits – in short, what’s in it for the consumer. Benefit-driven communications is the best way to speak to consumers. Is the brand more efficient? Provide time-saving or cost-saving?
In-store retail merchandising and retail point-of-sale (POS) mechanisms are crucial to make a connection with the consumer to drive both impulse and trial sales. To capture the consumer’s wandering eye, brands and retailers need to constant create new and innovative point-of-purchase (POP) to grab attention where and when in counts the most: in-store. Without these attention-getting on-shelf or in-store communication pieces, many consumers often overlook new products or specials and consequently buy familiar and already trusted brands.
Brand Marketers want to make sure that their brand doesn’t get lost in all the in-store option available to consumers. Here’s a quick check list to do just that:
Packaging:This is the most important brand POP. It is the piece that will keep on working where ever it is: on-shelf, in-store, in the pantry, in the home. It is all about originality! The brand package needs to carry the brand character, personality and voice and more importantly speak to its benefits.
POP:Using unique visual elements and colours that speak to the brand in order to draw attention to the product provides at the retail level the necessary impact. Creating effective POP on-shelf that speaks to consumers will entice them to make the change. Using mobiles, shelf-talkers, on-shelf coupon generators, on-shelf digital messaging are only a few tactics that are available.
End Aisle Displays/ Check Out Displays: Using these in-store tactics are an effective way of making brands stand out. While consumers wait in line or turn the aisle, the “one brand” shelving strategy definitely gets the desired effect. Couple this impact with the right benefit-driven message and brands will be sure to generate the much sought after impulse purchase.
Floor Graphics and Floor Stands:An effective and creative way to drive consumers right to products on-shelf is using floor graphics leading the way! Of course colourful floor stands filled with products are also effective and provide a solid “real-estate” space, often away from the competitive products.
Effective POP helps snap consumers out of their routine. It engages them at the most critical purchasing moment and affects behavior to drive sales. All brand marketers must be sure to get this part right. It doesn’t matter how great an advertising campaign is… if consumers don’t find the brand on the shelf, the sale is lost. After all isn’t that what it’s all about?
Despite our biological complexity, human beings are surprisingly straightforward and predictable when it comes to emotional reactions. The concept of honor, feelings of goodwill and being beholden to the person or company who gives us something for free is deeply engrained in the human psyche. Smart salespeople and businesses know this and have used it for centuries to close deals.
Promotional products are all around us. When you go to TD Bank for example, a basket of free pens sits on the counter with the bank’s logo printed on the side. The bank knows that this subtle gesture makes the customer feel confident that the bank must be flush with assets. Customers will be more likely to be loyal to the bank, opening new accounts for their children and grandchildren and recommending the bank to friends.
Hugely profitable businesses like pharmaceutical companies provide outside salespeople with promotional products to increase their sales percentages. They give away items such as personalized calendars, desk accessories and coffee mugs so that when it’s time to re-order supplies, the company name and phone number is right there in plain sight.
Extensive marketing studies have proven that businesses can benefit from promotional products. Response rates improve dramatically when potential customers receive free products because the name of the company is better recalled, and a favorable opinion of the company is formed unconsciously. Investing in promotional products is a smart marketing strategy that all businesses can benefit from.
For more information on promotional products look at the informational graphic below:
This graphic was created by Magnets.com, a promotional refrigerator magnet company. Magnets.com is proud to sell items that can boost the business of small and large businesses alike. Click here to learn about Mangets.com.
I will start this post by saying that this is not a jab at technology nor is it a rant on how business is being conducted today. Promise! Over the last 5 years the way business is being conducted has changed significantly, placing a strain on business relationships. Technology has made business accelerate at warp speed… resulting in many of us being strapped for time, overwhelmed and at wit’s end on how to meet expectations. We now have less time available for face-to-face meetings with clients and our vendor/partners. As emails have become the preferred way of business communications, phone calls are a thing of the past! I’m sure you’ll agree that calling anyone that actually picks up the phone, let alone a prospective client is like winning the lottery!
However, regardless of how the day-to-day business is being managed, ultimately relationships and the building of them is the key to any successful business. Through the years we at 3H, have noticed that quality time spent with clients is at a premium; it has increasingly become more difficult to get our clients and potential clients out for lunch, coffee or even a drink after work. That left us with the challenge of how to nurture and cultivate our relationships with our clients and even some potential clients.
Our approach was really a simply one, and one that was very natural – at least for me. You see I love birthdays. Actually, I love celebrating birthdays (I must admit I love celebrating my birthday most of all!). So every year for the last few years, an annual mandate for the 3H creative and design team is to develop, create and design a birthday card theme that would be carried throughout the year. These cards never go unnoticed. In fact, many who are on the receiving end of our birthday cards are quite touched by the thoughtfulness and are surprised that we remembered them on their birthday.
The irony doesn’t escape me either! A birthday card sent by mail is really a very traditional and low tech approach in business relationship building…. but I must say, it has garnered strong relationships for us. It has been the perfect blend of marketing, design and sales! The cards are all created and designed by the 3H creative team, allowing us to showcase our design and conceptual services. Our cards, of course, are very branded – all are purple and titanium. This not only builds the recognition of the 3H brand… it also illustrates to clients that we are effective brand builders.
Some of the concepts we’ve tackled were: Colorology, Destiny Number, Name Letter Profile, Birth Date numerology. Last year the 3H birthday card featured the Celtic Leaf Profile. The cards we send out are all created and designed by the 3H creative team. Each card is personalized. You can see these on our Pinterest Birthday Board. Feel free to download them and read about your Celtic Leaf Profile. It’s really quite accurate!
I’ll like to end this post by another heartfelt, low-tech message: Happy Holidays to one and all!
